


i saved it all for you

by lavendersgreen



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2015-03-25
Packaged: 2018-03-19 12:22:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3609957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavendersgreen/pseuds/lavendersgreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>political marriages, am I right</p>
            </blockquote>





	i saved it all for you

**Author's Note:**

> for Julie with love

“You lied,” the queen says. Her voice is even; she does not look up from the letter she writes.

Her husband, the king, leans against her desk, not quite at her feet. She had a chair brought in for him some time ago and sometimes still wishes he would use it.

“No,” he says slowly, and she can hear the pleasure in his voice, can feel his eyes upon her. “I would not lie to you.” 

She snorts, undignified.

“Well, I only waited, until I was sure,” he insists. 

He had only waited and then casually disrupted her entire treatise with her baron Lemos. And then, with Lemos squawking indignantly and Relius boiling beside her, the king had eaten an orange, guileless as anything, right there sideways in his throne. Only his eyes had sparked wicked at her: look at what I can do for you, my queen.

She had not been embarrassed, but she feels heat flushing terrible in her now. She is capable of such terribleness—as is he. 

She keeps her tone indifferent. “I do not ask of you what your queen who was Eddis asked.” 

He is sprawled indolent against the front of her desk, and now he reaches out to slip his right arm under the embroidered hem of her dress. The silver cuff of his hook brushes light against the back of her ankle. It is cold. 

“No,” he says again.

She does not want to startle him. This is still—they are still new, and she is easily startled as well. The queen looks at her husband now and knows him. She knows the tremble at his throat as he swallows.

He looks at her now, face open and wanting, and lets her see.

The queen of Attolia knows that this, too, is a trick.

The queen sets down her pen. “I do not ask that you serve me,” she says.

“Liar,” he says, delighted to have caught her in it.

The queen smoothes her dress across her lap to avoid clenching it in her hands. “It is different, to serve me as my king,” she observes.

“I know,” he says, and slides the cool metal up against her bare calf. She shivers. “I have been learning, my queen.” 

He watches her so closely, his eyes too bright and sharp. The queen, as ever, feels unraveled before that gaze, feels like an onion slipping out of its skin. 

The door is locked. He would have locked it behind him. 

She keeps her face implacable, even as her bare arms prickle, and she does not break his gaze. “Irene," she says sternly.

“Irene,” he says. Her chair suddenly shifts under her, and she grabs at her desk before realizing Eugenides has caught her chair leg in his hook and is turning her to face him.

She raises one eyebrow at him. He raises his back. He is suddenly—she can never quite track how he moves—he is kneeling now truly at her feet. His hand slips between her shins and eases them apart, raising her dress as he traces up her inner calf with his hook.

He watches her face, both hesitant and bold, like he thinks he is trespassing. 

He is such an inexplicable and dear creature, her king.

She does not wish to push him and yet—she will have this. She leans forward in her chair to slip her fingers into his hair, so soft and wild beneath her. She pulls his face closer to hers. She takes in his wide eyes and heavy open mouth; the queen says, very carefully, “I want you to keep saying it.”

He eases her knees apart with hand and hook; he tugs her forward to the edge of her chair. 

The door is locked, she reminds herself. “Irene,” he says.

“Yes,” she says, and lets him push her dress up to her lap.

He bites the inside of her thigh and she twists her hand in his hair. He looks up at her from under his eyelashes, just as her attendant Chloe does. His eyes are darker.

She meets his gaze: Eugenides, whom she wed before three countries and an empire. He is still fully clothed in his favorite and most audacious yellow, framed by her naked knees. His hand slips down from her waist to between her thighs; he drags the backs of two knuckles over the only fabric between them. 

Her breath catches in her chest and she must make a noise, because he says, “Irene,” his voice hoarse. She lifts her hips. 

He slides his hand beneath her to pull the last of her clothing down. He bends to free her feet and resurfaces such that her knees are over his shoulders and she is spread before him. He is very deliberate, her king. 

Irene touches his face, traces from the corner of his eye to beneath his ear, as gently as she knows how. She is half naked and open on her chair, and he is the one flushing.

“You are my husband,” she says, “and I trust you.”

Eugenides says her name again, shuddering, and bends his head.


End file.
